Cliff note version: At first I followed the aim small miss small approach, now I've learned a few things about shooting and realizing I shoot better using lower magnification.
It's been a year and half since the airgun bug bit me hard. Accumulated quite a few guns and thanks to Yo who is no longer here I got twice as many scopes and returned just as many from trying them, all in the pursuit of aim small miss small theory I've heard many times here and on youtube. By now I've sent 15-20k pellets into my pellet boxes and starting to get better over all at shooting but feels like I'm in a bit of rut or not really improving at all. I've done as much as I could think of to make everything more steady, got bipod, bags, bag riders blah blah blah. All that helped but that's a lot of crap to make a shot and what do I do that when I go hunting? Then I see headshots by @flintsack on chipmunks at whopping 30-40 yards with iron sight free hand, something that is completely incomprehensible to me. At 30 yards I use 10-12x magnification and still feels I need more to be more precise. As I got into long range shooting more looking at ELR guys on youtube they actually use 16-20x ONLY even on 1500-2000 yards shots, I was dumbfounded and perplex further. Then one day I asked @flintsack, how do you even see the chipmunk at 30 yards let alone made a headshot with obtrusive iron sights! His answer was he frame the target and surrounding with the iron sight, his advice was the beginning of new discovery for me.
After some thinking it started to make sense. I started to reduce my magnification little by little, using 8 instead of 12x at 20-30 yards and because of that I feel less jittery because I don't see every little movement my body makes and trying to correct/over correct it. Maybe I do like using less magnification, I feel like my groups are getting smaller. Another thing I found near impossible without being on a bench is putting that center dot on the target dead still, even on the bench I still find that difficult. Then one day I saw a video from Keith from Wishkey68 channel talking about timing natural sway of our body and not fight to keep it still. That was another eureka moment! But I found difficulty in practice but kept trying.
Found a nearby range so I can shoot pass 100-300 yards and I was stoked! Got out the 100 yard target and put a wind flag on it, started shooting with 20x and found myself panning to look at the wind flag and pan back to the target. Frustrated I reduced magnification to 12 so I can see the flag in the scope at the same time and bam! Got my sub MOA group! At 12x I didn't have to work really hard to to keep still/more relaxed because I'm not watching my reticle jump because of my heart beat....there is more to that but that's a different topic. Hummm........so more isn't more? Went to 300 yard range with my crown, shot at 200 yard target and feeling pretty good so decided to shoot at lumps of dirt at the end of the range which is 325 yards. At 200 yards I already had to hold 1 mil over and at 325 yards I had to hold extra 12 mils. Without any choice I had to reduce magnification down to 10x just so the 13 mil vertical and 3 mile horizontal hash mark is visible at the very edge of the scope. This is when @flintsack's framing suggestion really came to light, I had to "frame" the lump of dirt 4-5 inches in size (pretty small at that distance and 10x) between my christmas tree hash marks! And when the wind is right I would hit that lump of dirt at 325 yards 2 out of 3 shots. The framing method is really starting to make sense!
Feeling more enlightened I swapped my Dream-Tac compact and crown to LPVO scopes, at 20 yards 4 is about as high as I can do because of the fixed parallax. Today I was shooting my crown with Alpha6 1-6x LPVO at 4x with a 2 MOA center dot, it's a HUGE dot because at 20 yards and 4x that dot is 0.6 inches! I'm trying to land 0.177 pellets on top of each other. Employing what @flintsack method of framing or put that big round dot around where I want to shoot and then employ Keith from Wiskey68 method of timing my movement as the obtrusive black round dot/frame move over the target then press the trigger as the POA is mentally centered. I was able to land 3-4 shots in 1 jagged hole, to say I was shocked at the result is an understatement! This is complete opposite of what I used to do! Only 4x magnification with huge 2 MOA center dot vs 12x and fine line or small center dot reticle! And I was able to repeat the feat far more consistent and easier than my old "aim small" method! Only time I can really stack pellets on top of each other is either I had a really good day or completely rested with bipod and rear bag!
In short, I'm giving the "aim small" methodology the BOOT! Huge thanks to @flintsack and other AGN members for some incredibly insightful and valuable tips. This has been a very fun and rewarding journey and looking forward to many more years of discoveries and learning.
For reference here is the reticle I was using:
Here is a picture of my crown and said scope because everyone likes pictures! =P
It's been a year and half since the airgun bug bit me hard. Accumulated quite a few guns and thanks to Yo who is no longer here I got twice as many scopes and returned just as many from trying them, all in the pursuit of aim small miss small theory I've heard many times here and on youtube. By now I've sent 15-20k pellets into my pellet boxes and starting to get better over all at shooting but feels like I'm in a bit of rut or not really improving at all. I've done as much as I could think of to make everything more steady, got bipod, bags, bag riders blah blah blah. All that helped but that's a lot of crap to make a shot and what do I do that when I go hunting? Then I see headshots by @flintsack on chipmunks at whopping 30-40 yards with iron sight free hand, something that is completely incomprehensible to me. At 30 yards I use 10-12x magnification and still feels I need more to be more precise. As I got into long range shooting more looking at ELR guys on youtube they actually use 16-20x ONLY even on 1500-2000 yards shots, I was dumbfounded and perplex further. Then one day I asked @flintsack, how do you even see the chipmunk at 30 yards let alone made a headshot with obtrusive iron sights! His answer was he frame the target and surrounding with the iron sight, his advice was the beginning of new discovery for me.
After some thinking it started to make sense. I started to reduce my magnification little by little, using 8 instead of 12x at 20-30 yards and because of that I feel less jittery because I don't see every little movement my body makes and trying to correct/over correct it. Maybe I do like using less magnification, I feel like my groups are getting smaller. Another thing I found near impossible without being on a bench is putting that center dot on the target dead still, even on the bench I still find that difficult. Then one day I saw a video from Keith from Wishkey68 channel talking about timing natural sway of our body and not fight to keep it still. That was another eureka moment! But I found difficulty in practice but kept trying.
Found a nearby range so I can shoot pass 100-300 yards and I was stoked! Got out the 100 yard target and put a wind flag on it, started shooting with 20x and found myself panning to look at the wind flag and pan back to the target. Frustrated I reduced magnification to 12 so I can see the flag in the scope at the same time and bam! Got my sub MOA group! At 12x I didn't have to work really hard to to keep still/more relaxed because I'm not watching my reticle jump because of my heart beat....there is more to that but that's a different topic. Hummm........so more isn't more? Went to 300 yard range with my crown, shot at 200 yard target and feeling pretty good so decided to shoot at lumps of dirt at the end of the range which is 325 yards. At 200 yards I already had to hold 1 mil over and at 325 yards I had to hold extra 12 mils. Without any choice I had to reduce magnification down to 10x just so the 13 mil vertical and 3 mile horizontal hash mark is visible at the very edge of the scope. This is when @flintsack's framing suggestion really came to light, I had to "frame" the lump of dirt 4-5 inches in size (pretty small at that distance and 10x) between my christmas tree hash marks! And when the wind is right I would hit that lump of dirt at 325 yards 2 out of 3 shots. The framing method is really starting to make sense!
Feeling more enlightened I swapped my Dream-Tac compact and crown to LPVO scopes, at 20 yards 4 is about as high as I can do because of the fixed parallax. Today I was shooting my crown with Alpha6 1-6x LPVO at 4x with a 2 MOA center dot, it's a HUGE dot because at 20 yards and 4x that dot is 0.6 inches! I'm trying to land 0.177 pellets on top of each other. Employing what @flintsack method of framing or put that big round dot around where I want to shoot and then employ Keith from Wiskey68 method of timing my movement as the obtrusive black round dot/frame move over the target then press the trigger as the POA is mentally centered. I was able to land 3-4 shots in 1 jagged hole, to say I was shocked at the result is an understatement! This is complete opposite of what I used to do! Only 4x magnification with huge 2 MOA center dot vs 12x and fine line or small center dot reticle! And I was able to repeat the feat far more consistent and easier than my old "aim small" method! Only time I can really stack pellets on top of each other is either I had a really good day or completely rested with bipod and rear bag!
In short, I'm giving the "aim small" methodology the BOOT! Huge thanks to @flintsack and other AGN members for some incredibly insightful and valuable tips. This has been a very fun and rewarding journey and looking forward to many more years of discoveries and learning.
For reference here is the reticle I was using:
Here is a picture of my crown and said scope because everyone likes pictures! =P
